Recently, mobile communication devices, personal digital assistants (PDA) or other small-sized portable electronic devices with image-shooting functions are widely used. Since the portable electronic devices can be carried easily, the image-shooting functions become the basic functions of the portable electronic devices. In other words, the portable electronic device is equipped with a camera module.
The structure of a conventional camera module will be described as follows. FIG. 1 is a schematic top view illustrating a portion of a conventional camera module. As shown in FIG. 1, the camera module 1 comprises an optical lens 10, a sensing chip 11 and a substrate 12. The optical lens 10 is located over the sensing chip 11. After the ambient light beams pass through the optical lens 10, the ambient light beams are refracted to perform an imaging task. The sensing chip 11 is installed on the substrate 12. The sensing chip 11 has a sensing area 111. The optical lens 10 covers the range of the sensing area 111. When the ambient light beams passing through the optical lens 10 are imaged on the sensing area 111, an image is generated. The substrate 12 is electrically connected with a power source (not shown) of a portable electronic device (not shown). By acquiring the electric power from the power source, the camera module 1 is normally operated. In addition to the above components, the camera module 1 further comprises additional components. For example, according to the practical requirements, the camera module 1 further comprises a voice coil motor or an anti-vibration module. These additional components are not the subject of the present invention, and are not redundantly described herein.
Please refer to FIGS. 2 and 3. FIG. 2 is a schematic top view illustrating the conventional assembling device and the conventional camera module. FIG. 3 is a schematic perspective view illustrating a portion of a fastening table of the conventional assembling device and a portion of the conventional camera module. In FIG. 2, the structure of an assembling device 2 and the structure of the camera module 1 are shown. The assembling device 2 comprises a fastening table 21, an alignment module 22, an optical lens bracket 23, a sensing chip bracket 24 and plural substrate brackets 25. The alignment module 22 comprises plural alignment fixtures 221. After the camera module 1 is fixed on the fastening table 21, the process of assembling the camera module 1 is performed. It is noted that the assembling device 2 further comprises additional modules for assisting in assembling the camera module 1. For succinctness, these additional modules are not shown in FIG. 2.
The process of assembling the camera module 1 will be described as follows. Firstly, the sensing chip 11 is installed on the substrate 12. Then, the substrate 11 with the sensing chip 11 is placed on the fastening table 21. Then, the optical lens 10 is placed on the plural alignment fixtures 221 of the alignment module 22. Then, the plural alignment fixtures 221 are used to perform active alignment on the optical lens 10. Then, the optical lens 10 and the sensing chip 11 are combined together. After the above assembling process, the camera module 1 is fabricated.
With increasing development of science and technology, the user pays much attention to the image-shooting function of the portable electronic device. For example, the portable electronic device is usually equipped with a front camera module for taking self-portrait photos. Consequently, the demands of the user on the shooting efficacy of the front camera module (especially the pixel values) are gradually increased. For example, the front camera module with at least several ten millions of pixels is satisfactory to the user. However, the volume of the high-pixel front camera module is large. Moreover, the portable electronic device with the large-sized display panel is favored by most users. Since the large-sized display panel occupies a lot of inner space of the portable electronic device, it is difficult to install the high-pixel front camera module in the portable electronic device.
For solving the above drawbacks, the manufacturers produce and develop the camera modules with diverse shapes in order to evade the components of the portable electronic devices. Consequently, the camera module can be installed in the portable electronic device. However, some kinds of camera modules are not suitably assembled by the assembling device 2 because of their shapes. For example, since the strip-like camera module is very long, it is difficult to fix the strip-like camera module on the fastening table 21. Moreover, since the accommodation space of the assembling device 2 is limited, it is difficult to accommodate strip-like camera module within the assembling device 2. Under this circumstance, the camera module 1 cannot be successfully assembled.
Therefore, there is a need of providing an assembling method of a strip-like camera module.